Gerrymandering

February 10, 2013

The latest scam in Harrisburg is HB94, which would allocate the state's electoral votes by congressional district. This brazen piece of partisan politics is anti-democratic and unamerican.

While it is clearly unfair that Obama was awarded all 20 of Pennsylvania's electoral votes for getting 52 percent of its vote, it is also unfair that Romney got all 16 of Georgia's electoral votes for winning 53 percent of its vote. The right way to correct this problem would be to pass a constitutional amendment abolishing the electoral college and electing the president by popular vote.

There is also a National Popular Vote Bill that doesn't need a constitutional amendment. You can learn about it at nationalpopularvote.com. States that enact it would award their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. It would go into effect when the states that enact it control a majority of the electoral vote; they are currently half way there.

Under the Republicans' scheme, Romney would have gained electoral votes in Pennsylvania without having to give up any in Georgia.

Even though Obama won 52 percent of the vote, and 50 percent of Pennsylvanians voted for a Democratic candidate for Congress, under their proposal, Obama would have only gotten 7 of it's 20 electoral votes, that's 35 percent, instead of 52 percent. How wrong is that?

Anyone, regardless of party, who believes elections should be about determining, rather than subverting, the will of the people must oppose this rigging of the system. We will soon learn how many principled Republicans, and Democrats for that matter, we have in this state. As a Green, the very notion of a principled major party politician is an oxymoron. I'm most curious about what, if anything, the Democratic Party will do to expose and defeat this scam.